An eating disorder is an illness that causes serious disturbances to your everyday diet, such as eating extremely small amounts of food or severely overeating. A person with an eating disorder may have started out just eating smaller or larger amounts of food, but at some point, the urge to eat less or more spiraled out of control. Severe distress or concern about body weight or shape may also characterize an eating disorder.

Fat. That is my word. That’s the word I wake up next to every single morning and go to sleep with every single night. Still. I’m twenty years old and I don’t remember a single day when I haven’t been wholly and irrevocably obsessed with food. If I’m giving a presentation in class, I’m thinking about food; if I’m calling my credit card company to replace my card, I’m thinking about food; if I’m in a job interview, I’m thinking about food; if I’m eating, I’m thinking about food. Most of my day consists of obsessing over eating food, not eating food, when to eat it, how much to eat, where to buy it from, what I already ate today, what I will eat today, what I will eat a month from now. You get the idea.

First and foremost, I was and continue to be overwhelmed in the most cliched way possible by the response I got to the first blog. I want to thank each and every person who even pretended to read the blog and just clicked “like” (I guess they probably aren’t reading this, but whatever). I was scared out of my mind to post something like that on Facebook, mainly for the reason that I didn’t want to annoy people with it–a feeling which was quickly negated by the outpouring of lovely messages and personal conversations I had with people. So thank you!

I’m going to fail. I’d like to be more positive than that, but I am going to fail. In a few weeks time I will be going home for winter break and commence by far the most trying time of my entire year: eating big meals around my extended family.

We’re often told to love ourselves. After all, we can’t truly love anyone else until we love ourselves, and unconditional love of other people is another one of our collective goals. But love can feel difficult. On days when you are worn out by the critical voice in your head or the demands of your day, self-love can feel like an impossible request. Love? I cannot even find the energy to like myself today.